


sick day

by honey_wheeler



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s kind of a dork, really. His hair is always messy and he always likes the wrong women and he thinks hard work is fun, instead of hard and also work. But he always offers to help on her homework. He fixes her bike when it has a flat tire. He smiles at her like she matters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sick day

It’s not like Maeby is a stranger to doing things the wrong way. She’s ducked out on hotel bills, dined and dashed, took money from the till. Hell, she’s pretended to be in a wheelchair more than once. But it seems worse to have a crush on your uncle.

He’s kind of a dork, really. His hair is always messy and he always likes the wrong women and he thinks hard work is fun, instead of hard and also work. But he always offers to help on her homework. He fixes her bike when it has a flat tire. He smiles at her like she matters.

She knows it’s really sick and wrong. Michael is more a father to her than her own is. He’s the only sane person in her whole family, really. And he’s _old_. It’s just hard to remember all that when he looks at her, his eyes full of understanding, and clasps her shoulder in that way he has. Even harder to remember when she tells him she’s not feeling well, so she has an excuse for staying home and working on a script, and he steers her over to the window so he can check her throat for redness. His fingers test her neck for swollen glands. His forearms rest along her collarbones and he smells clean and familiar, like soap or laundry detergent. She’d never realized before how much she likes the smell of Tide.

“You don’t seem to have a fever,” he mutters distractedly as he holds the back of his hand to her forehead and cheeks. That’s enough to raise her pulse and make her flush, though, so he sends her off to bed.

She has to stash the script under the pillow every time he comes to check on her. The weight of his body makes the mattress dip. No matter how stiffly she holds herself, her hip shifts down against his and she feels him, solid and warm against her. She kind of misses being a little girl. At least then she would have an excuse to ask him to crawl in alongside her until she fell asleep.

When he comes in late in the afternoon, she feigns sleep. Still, he sits on the edge of her mattress. She cracks her eyelids just a fraction. His arms are resting heavily on his knees. He looks so tense she wants to sit up and hug him. Then she’s squeezing her eyes shut as he turns towards her. He brushes her hair away from her face, leans down to press a kiss to her forehead. It’s all she can do to stay still. Long after he leaves the room she still feels nervous and jittery, like something’s come undone in her stomach.

For dinner he gives her a heaping bowl of ice cream, with chocolate sauce and peanuts. When her mother makes a tart comment about balanced meals, Michael only winks at Maeby and slides a spoon across the table at her. George-Michael looks jealous and she smiles, just a little.


End file.
